


feeling good

by orphan_account



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy
Genre: Angst, F/M, Gen, Zack Fair & Cloud Strife Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-10
Updated: 2015-02-10
Packaged: 2018-03-11 14:35:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3329750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The lights go out for Zack Fair.</p>
            </blockquote>





	feeling good

**Author's Note:**

> _Very_ old piece of writing I've edited a bit. Replaying FF VII atm, having lots of feels.

stars when you shine,  
you know how i feel  
scent of the pine,  
you know how i feel  
  
oh, freedom is mine  
and i know how i feel.  
it's a new dawn, it's a new day,  
it's a new life for me.  
and i'm feeling good.  
  
“feeling good” – muse

 

 

And here they are again, the nice little toy army that’s come just for him and Cloud.

He’d known they would come. He’d almost known.

“Oh, man,” he murmurs to himself, “they sure are a persistent bunch, gotta hand it to them.”

He closes his eyes for a brief moment and—

(thinks of a girl he’d met in a broken church with broken bells, once upon a time in winter. And he imagines, stupidly, for the six hundred and fifty-eighth time, how they should’ve met instead: to the sounds of whole bells in a whole church on a sunny Sunday morning in spring.

He thinks of a girl, a lovely girl, with green eyes full of spark and a kindness so fierce it still kills him today after so, so many years.

He thinks of a girl, a lovely, lonely girl he hopes isn’t waiting for him anymore. He knows she deserves so much more, and he can’t make it now; he can’t give her what she deserves, not now.

It’s not a matter of wishing; it’s a matter of possibility. He’d give her the world if he could.

And, a little resentfully, he hopes there’s another little stubborn fucker like him out there, because someone has to give her the world and it if it won’t be him, it’s gotta be someone like him.)

—opens his eyes again.

Opens his eyes again, and they still stand there, like the stupid little automatons they are. Stupid little automatons, thinking they know better than him because they’re doing their orders, fulfilling the purpose of the great Shin-Ra company. If they’d know what he knows now, oh. Oh, yes, God, he’d like to see their faces then.

Zack Fair breathes in for presumably the last time, draws his sword for presumably the last time, and will fight for the presumably last time.

He’s got his own toy army summoned here, and he feels it’s his responsibility to give them one hell of a show. Can’t disappoint them now, not when they’ve come so far for him.

A reckless glint in his eyes (that hunger for flashes of cracked brown earth speeding by in a blur and wind on his face as he rides his bike, fast faster the fastest, until there’s only adrenaline pulsing fiercely in his veins and the deafening, rushing song of the wind burning in his ears and f-f-f-f-freedom)

and a sharp grin on the lips of the mouth that wants to scream ‘let me go,’ an urge as primal as the thrum of dodging and attacking like the stuttering beat of his heart, and he feels a little wild and a little high, and when he breathes in sharply—

everything goes so fast and everything’s so colourful and vivid and

and

then there’s no air left.

\---

His last memory goes like this: There is a quiet, troubled boy trying so hard to be a man; a boy who still needs a whole damn shot of confidence, and Zack wasn’t the one to give it to him. He hopes the boy will meet the girl with the same lost eyes again and that she can give him that confidence one day because the boy’s loved her since the beginning of time. He sees a boy he’s so damn fond of it's almost ridiculous and Zack’s last thought is

‘You better be fine.’

And the lights go out to his friend Cloud with the flaxen hair and the lost blue eyes and the mouth that is meant to smile. And the lights go out for Zack Fair with a smile on his own face because Zack’s always been a believer: he knows his friend will make it.


End file.
